Shane,
being the wine buff that he is, saw the National Meet (and a serious attempt
at the Rookie's Trophy) as a reasonable excuse to drop into Melbourne
on the way to the wineries of Victoria.
The Thursday morning was the culmination of weeks of tinkering with
Shane's CRX, rewiring the headlights, changing the clutch, replacing a
noisy gearbox bearing, fitting a fire extinguisher, a couple of goes at
the air conditioner, painting the brakes, rebuilding the brake master cylinder,
flushing and adding silicone brake fluid, adjusting the doors with a trolley
jack. It was going to be a long day for me, after getting up in the pitch
dark at 4:30am to finalise all my gear for Shane's arrival between 5 and
6am, I waited until 6:20 to ring him, "Oh, I just got up, I'll be there
shortly."
So we set off at 7:20, and hit the road west, it was pretty uneventful
down to Forbes where Shane had organised the Ben Hall Motor Inn for the
night, we arrived at 6:20, and headed for the local pub, which had been
there for over a hundred years. The meal was great and we sat back to watch
the local entertainment, which hasn't changed in the last forty years,
that is, to get the ute or Commodore and cruise up and down the main street
and make one's presence known, and to pass comments like "Korean crap"
to Hyundai drivers (maybe that's changed), occasionally the local constabulary
would cruise as well just to keep order.
We hit the road at 8:20 the next morning, and found that the 110kph limit had extended all the way to the border these days, which significantly increased our average speed. There was no Police presence to speak of, but all the traffic was behaving well on the open road. As soon as we got to the Victorian border, there was a light sprinkle of rain as the southerly front we had been watching approached. Then came our first side-trip, to Michelton Winery near Nagambie, one of the most respected in the Goulburn Valley. Established in 1969 it has a spectacular 55m tower which houses a 120 seat restaurant overlooking the 130 Ha of vines. It has exceptionally long lived wines with the Riesling and Chardonnay cellaring for over 10 years, and reds to match. That excursion perked us up for the rest of the easy drive into the top of Melbourne, and across to Werribee by 4:20 in the afternoon, 1696km from home, exactly as I had predicted.
I always enjoy meeting up with the people that I only get to see at National Meets, I especially enjoy it in other States, because I don't have to do any of the work. Some of the usual suspects were missing this year, but there were still plenty of familiar faces, and a whole bunch of new ones to meet. It was good to have a spare day to socialise on Saturday, a bunch of us had a look around the Point Cook Air Museum and cruised down to Geelong for lunch and a couple of hours at the Ford Discovery Centre where lots of motoring history and technology is on display.
I had hoped to see Murray Atkinson at registration so I could ask him if I could drive his Civic in the Motorkhana, but he had visitors from overseas, and he was only going to be at the competition venues over the weekend, I mentioned this to Maurice (who often guest drives Murray's Civic) and he said that he could drive a Corolla at the motorkhana and he was sure Murray wouldn't mind if I stepped in. As it happened, Murray was the last to arrive at the motorkhana ground on Sunday, so he didn't have much time to consider the situation, but he graciously agreed to let me drive. Sometime later during the event, Maurice broke the news to Murray that he had decided to do the Nav Run with Jo instead, so I could navigate for Murray (who looked a bit bewildered at the prospect).
The Motorkhana ground was fairly dry with a crumbly crust on top with plenty of grip underneath, it proved to be a bit dusty later in the day. Shane was in Class B with Kevin Johns, and I kept warning Shane that Kevin was a front runner in the '80 (Hondamatic) Prelude, and Kevin had a 0.6s break on him until the Fwd & Rev Slalom, and then it blew out to 2.25s (CRXs weren't made to reverse in). Meanwhile in Class C, Michele was in a tight tussle with Kerril which came down to just 0.21s in Kerril's favour after Michele regained 2.3s on the Fwd & Rev Slalom. Also in Class C, Murray Cottrell had a good battle with Steve McTaggart with two course wins each, but Steve managed a 4th outright time on the Crazy Square giving him a 1.5s break, and he finished up just 0.37s ahead. Campbell reckons he wasn't there to try very hard but managed a third in Class A.
Murray Atkinson and I were also in Class C, we managed to get the fastest three times in three of the courses, and Kevin Johns got the Fwd & Reverse Slalom fastest, placing him 3rd outright ahead of Shane. We could tell that Murray was concentrating, so I knew I had to, the Civic has the advantage of a limited slip diff (and so did Richard Colley in the Type 'R', who won his class by 4.5 secs) so it is always a front running car. I found it a pleasure to drive, I had a test run in it last year and was impressed. At the end I had a 2 second buffer and I managed to post Fastest Time of Day and maintain my record of never being beaten in a borrowed car, I must take my own car to a motorkhana one day! Murray had trouble on the Fwd & Rev Slalom (partly due to my taping the handbrake button) and that course made the difference, but he still secured second outright. Thank you Murray. Just 2.7 seconds covered 4th to 10th places outright.
The Observation Run is always difficult at National Meet level, and it often helps to be a novice, experience dictates that you can look for potential answers that don't make any sense, and you waste a lot of time overlooking the obvious. As usual there were many examples of disputed logic with the questions, but all the questions were answered by someone, and the 2 winning cars had different answers wrong, so I guess it was OK.
The Sprint came around, and I was in negotiation with the officials to get a familiarisation drive in Shane's car, (Shane didn't really want me to compete in the CRX) when Maurice suggested that I ask Murray Atkinson for a run in the Civic, so once again, 5 minutes before the event, Murray reluctantly agreed. I had a familiarisation run as a passenger with Shane, which showed me the way around the circuit, this may not have been a good thing, because once I climbed into Murray's car with some quite old A008s on, I was warmer than the tyres, and the 2nd gear right hander at the end of the back straight caught me going in too deep, and I backed off a bit too much at the apex, and found myself backing off the circuit, and watching Steve McKenzie doing the same in sympathy! That was enough warm-up for me!
The six car sprint was a new concept for me, in Qld in '99 we sent out two batches of two cars, separately. Calder was a free for all from the pit lane, in most cases the dummy grid was sorted from quickest to slowest anyway, but I had one run caught behind the bunch of early Civics, which was clearly going to be a problem for me circulating 4 - 10 seconds quicker than them. I found myself amongst them going over the hump on the half lap warm up, and having to negotiate a way past them down the back straight to the start line. It is hard to know if they have seen you or not. Later in the day I was circulating right behind Jeff Hawkins in Tony Henderson's Pulsar, at the end of the back straight I had the tail let go on me like it did in practice, I decided I was not going to disgrace myself twice, so I dialled in full lock, and full throttle, (Jeff said he saw me in his mirror and thought "Ahh, he's gone."), somehow after quite some time, the tail started to recover, so I backed off a bit to avoid the spin in the opposite direction, and it miraculously came back straight, just in time for the next corner. Jeff looked in his mirror again, and thought "What's he still doing there?". After that the tyres came to life and behaved themselves. The limited slip diff allows you to come out of a corner deeper than normal, because it will stop you spinning up the inside wheel and going gardening, it bites and turns instead, so it's worth several seconds a lap, and saves much biting of the lower lip. I made sure I behaved myself and kept a respectable time difference between Murray and myself. In our section of the results, 6th to 12th place outright across 3 classes were within 1.3 seconds of each other. They haven't managed to get the smile off me yet, I had so much fun, thanks Murray!!
After much changing of tyres, and in the case of Shane's car, hot brake pads (Shane will explain that in another article), we could pack all the junk back in the cars and head for the showers. Then the festivities (and musical chairs) started at the restaurant, and a good meal was enjoyed by all, the trophies were dispensed to the deserving, and the congratulations given, many tall stories swapped, and all promised to be heading for somewhere south of Sydney next year, to enjoy the wide open spaces of Oran Park Grand Prix circuit.
After the final breakfast at the motel, Kerril kept a tight reign on the delegates meeting, so we weren't there until lunch. We resolved to write down all the things that have gradually become convention for running National Meets so that newer people can run them without running foul of things that they hadn't heard of before. After running about 5 National Meets in Qld, there's still things we forget about each time.
See the 2000 picture gallery...
